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Archive | October 2014

So Discovery’s Shark Week has come and we got all caught up in the madness. I was liberal with my choices in taping for the kids and prewatched a few first (Submarine the massively huge shark special was deleted quickly) but we certainly got our fill on some excellent and not so excellent shows. I will include our watched list including one lucky Dirty Jobs find on Animal Planet that week. Just remember, some are more… ratings grabbers than truly educational pieces… though we found ANYTHING narrated by Mike Rowe was a goldmine for the kids. Of course, we fell in love with him on Dirty Jobs and the kids want to watch anything with him or his voice on it!

We watched quite a few shows

Bull Shark: World’s Deadliest Shark

Shark City

Monster Hammerhead

Shark Feeding Frenzy

Great White Highway

Lair of the Mega Shark

Great White Invasion

Return of Jaws

Dirty Jobs, Season 4 Episode 18: Greenland Shark Quest

Zombie Sharks

Deadly Stripes: Tiger Sharks

Sharkzilla (with people off Mythbusters)

Jaws Strikes Back

Alien Sharks

Alien Sharks: Return of the Abyss

Deadly Waters

We also branched out with some very brief reading on some lesser known sharks to write on the back of some shark images we printed from one of our saved files. I am including these sharks here:

The Thresher Shark thanks to Shark Sider HERE. Gavin was especially interested in this shark due to its unusual tail that we later found out it uses to hunt!

The Whale Shark is one of Zander’s favourites. We found facts thanks to Animals Time HERE.

The Nurse Shark thanks to National Geographic HERE. A rather interesting LARGE shark who really only eats microscopic items!

There was a print out error in the square pictures and we did not have one for the Mako shark even though it was featured in other lists in the same print out. So we made our own slightly larger paper with a hand drawing and information we found at the EnchantedLearning site HERE.

Of course we went to our usual sources for Shark print outs etc and while we did not DO a lot of crafts and settled instead for drawing our own pictures and having fun “what if” discussions we do have some links to help you out on your shark themed learning!

Activity Village has a little bit of everything. Though we did not use their how to draw a shark instructions. You can find their general list of resources HERE.

We used Art for Kids’ shark how to draw instructions for sharks HERE. The kids loved the expression on this shark’s face! They also have Hammerhead instructions HERE. I do wish there was a print out page for this one as we love including the instructions in our finished folders and adding them to our overflowing binder of Art for Kids print outs.

For spelling words we started out the week with 10 general shark words:

shark

swim

carnivore

eggs

fish

ocean

fin

gill

pup

teeth

For the second week I took the list of 10 most dangerous sharks from Angel Fire site HERE. For Trinity and Emanuel I just did two random shark related words a day. Emanuel’s favourite was hammer and head… the moment he said the two together he just lit up!

With some of the worksheets there were questions about shark anatomy. I found a decent list of fin information on the site KidCyber.com HERE.

We looked up two different terms for our studies… breaching where we took the definition off the top of our good search HERE. Out second term was opportunistic feeders. We found our definition on the Merriam Webster site HERE.

We also did a quick animal report on the Remora. We figured we wanted to know more about this fish we continually saw in almost all of our Discovery channel shows. Sadly not much is known about certain aspects of the fish, BUT the site Animal Diversity Web had some interesting (if not complicated) information for us to use on our report HERE.

Emanuel has had an interest in the Cookiecutter Sharks since he saw them on Octonauts (HERE). So we did up a colouring page thanks to KidsPlayColor.com HERE. We used the information on EnchantedLearning HERE to do a quick write up on the back of our colouring page to include in our shark book. With over 200 species I am figure we will continue finding sharks of interest over the years!

We didn’t do much in the way of books as there was SO MUCH Discovery Channel content, but I did pull what we had on sharks out of our personal collection:

Incredible Sea Creatures by Reading Discovery (a level 2 reader)

Amazing Sharks by Melvin Berger

Life in the Water – A Child’s First Library of Learning

I certainly hope all of this information can be of some help! Good luck!

I have been playing with favourite patterns and thinner yarn or different needles.. these two Cthulhu came out of that play. BABIES!!! Using light Caron Simply Soft. You can find the pattern HERE… or purchase a completed (and slightly larger) version on my Etsy site HERE. I plan on putting some wee ones up eventually… after the Christmas present rush.

Over the weekend we took a little time and finally got our act together to assemble our Shark unit book… the duotang was almost too small! You can check out our resources used, etc on our resource entry on the blog HERE. It was quite the unit.

On Sunday (AFTER Sunday School of course) we had a lovely visit with the Novaks. We were supposed to leave around dinner time for a coffee date but it fell through so it was a relaxing afternoon with good friends.

Snoopy was a willing subject for the camera as usual.

And we came home with some new reading material! Thank you so much Aidan for letting these gems go!

On Monday we had princesses at school… in MITTENS (super garage sale find for a quarter I think).

Gavin created an amazing FALL tree we later entered in the Art for Kids (link on right) fall art contest. I love it when they just go without instructions and really work with the Lego! We actually have the 3 boys enrolled in a once monthly class online with Currclick that is free for Legos. They are really enjoying it. They have multiple free and for pay classes through their site now!

Tuesday was so lovely we drug our new desks outside for craft time before they get placed in the school area inside.

Nature came out to share with our crafty time as well! Though after the scare elsewhere in the country with a fuzzy caterpillar that caused burn like rashes we kept our hands well away!

With a new school year we have also pulled down our previous year’s posters… so it was time to create a new fall scene for our walls. Can you believe it is fall already? Where did the time go???

We have had a jump with our learning as well. Emanuel suddenly WANTS to try and write out his own words in his journal and in letters. So be prepared… I correct the spelling above but you will get to see his creative management of letters in his words!!

We have taken to doing work in areas… videos on the DVD player for volcanoes.

Sometimes you need a bit of a quiet weekend, especially after the last month or so of go go go. The twins are still set on playing and collecting Pokemon cards. They have quite the personal stash going and are doing amazing at keeping their cards in their boxes and actually trying to play the game properly. I do believe they have even stopped the copious amounts of cheating! Which means soon we should be able to head to the local comic book store (The Source, though it is so much more than a comic book store) when they have gaming table set up. Emanuel cannot wait to read well enough to be able to start his own collection.

Miss Echo has resurrected her love of her Little People sets… it is quite the sight to see her drag all her sets and toys and the bucket they go into out into the living room to play. Always this must be done ALL BY HERSELF.

All too soon it was back to the daily grind. But first we had to have a discussion about what we wanted to be for Halloween. After all costume creation is never overnight. I do love hearing their crazy and not so crazy ideas, though Zander has opted to recycle last year’s costume and be a ninja two years running.

We have thrown ourselves into our new curriculum books with Echo the ever diligent supervisor.

We have begun our series of volcano learning. The goal for the twins now is to have them cherry pick their own special facts and information from tv while they watch it and record it themselves. The idea of sifting through something to find the important bits. Volcanoes is definitely a SLOOOOW unit, potentially structured over two months. We started with Magic School Bus and their visit to a volcano.

Even Echo got a turn at the worksheets. She uses her pencil with gusto!

Art for Kids (link on right) have changed things up and now are doing a once a week email out to those who subscribe where you get a few of their art instructions in a printable format. The link is good for a week and then gone. I would totally recommend you sign up. These instructions are great for any age!

We are having a bit of a teacher assistant situation going on lately. The twins have become amazing helpers!

This week we also saw off our scout for his second year of scouting!! How exciting. Note the badges sewn on AND the new neckerchief!

The boys got brand new tshirts in the mail from Gammie! They had to strike a pose and take a photo!

On Friday Renee and Jeffrey collected us (minus Echo) and we headed over to the Speltz family home. A hobby farm! We were spoiled rotten with a puppy to play with and vegetables to pick… Thank you so much to Mr. and Mrs. Speltz for the veggies, especially the hand chosen pumpkins! And Renee for the trip!

We got a few green pumpkins that Trinity has guessed with take TWENTY days to turn orange (I am rather certain it will be more than that but what a fun experiment!).

Copious amounts of carrots has us ready to make freezer carrots and enjoy the fresh veg on an everyday basis.

Later in the day Trinity and I walked down the street to a local garage sale. I love it when they are in the neighbourhood.

We ended our week with a birthday cheesecake for Baba and a group of worn out dirty kids. Showers all round and bed! What a week!